


You burn me

by Etalice



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Getting Together, Literary References, Love declaration that read like volcanology essays, Misquoted Emily Dickinson poems, Old Folk Magic, Properly quoted Sappho fragments, Roommates, an overabundance of metaphors, poetic prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 16:29:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19794682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etalice/pseuds/Etalice
Summary: Ginny doesn’t notice the cool autumn air licking at the skin of her back. She’s ablaze with passion and want, her fire-skinned hands spreading across Luna’s moon-wax skin like the flame that devoured Serra de Sintra once. Lunae Mons, the ancients called them. Moon mountains, dwelling of Diana the Huntress, Diana of the underworld, Diana of the thrice-splitting way. But it is not Diana that Ginny worships with her hands and mouth, it is not Diana for whom Ginny’s heart sings hymns and psalms (Luna is a goddess in her own right, ruling over apple trees and old wooden stairs, overseeing windowsills and rocks and garden hedges.)In the wake of her breakup with Harry, Ginny moves in with Luna and falls in love.





	You burn me

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written for the Battleship with the prompt:  
>  _Person B answers an advert for a room in a flat that seems too good to be true. It turns out that the flatmate is none other than Luna Lovegood, and while the flat exceeds expectations, Living with Luna™ turns out to be more than Person B could have ever anticipated._
> 
> It was beta-ed by the ever-wonderful [Andithiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andithiel/pseuds/Andithiel) whose kindness and sharp eyes were very much appreciated.

In the wake of her break-up with Harry, Ginny takes to reading the paper.

It’s an entirely ordinary habit, reading the paper. There’s nothing out of place to her fingers thumbing the whisper-thin pages over steaming ceramic mugs of coffee or tea or anything that might stop the bone-heavy exhaustion from curling around her head. It soothes her.

_This is a list of all the other things Ginny starts doing after Harry left:_

  1. _Taking off her shoes and letting the cold-wet ground caress the sole of her feet._
  2. _Cursing at the sea._
  3. _Flying too high, too hard, too fast until she feels the cool wind seep into her pores and spread like quicksilver under her skin._
  4. _Staring at ceilings for seconds and minutes and hours, until the sun paints the horizon in red and peach and violet and all the cracks in the plaster catch on fire._



_None of these things matter but Ginny does them anyway, the same way she accomplishes the minutiae of being alive, like she’s rolling a heavy stone up an endless hill._

In the wake of her break-up with Harry, Ginny takes to reading the paper. 

Later, she’ll forget all about it, she’ll forget the moth-wing softness of the paper under her fingertips and she’ll forget how the black-ink stains of ordinary words grounded her. She’ll remember it in passing, as one would remember the black cloud gathering in the sky before the thunderstorm or the warmth of sunshine before spring covers the winter-sleeping ground in vegetation fireworks, and she’ll smile, and she’ll kiss Luna’s hair in the gold-bleak light of dawn. But it is not later, not yet, and she reads the paper, and an advert catches her eye. (And this is where the story begins.)

 _Room to let_ , the advert reads. _Private bathroom and balcony. Kitchen, sitting room and garden to be shared between tenants,_ it continues (words strung together in neat little pearl strands of sentences.)

Ginny pauses.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the Burrow, and her mum’s been lovely about the break-up. Supportive. _I know you wanted me to marry him. I know you’re heartbroken that he’ll never be your son now, not properly, not in name. (I know.) I know and I’m sorry I never loved him right. I know and I’m sorry I lost him._

Ginny owls to inquire about the room.

The advert-writer owls back, and so, Ginny Apparates to the Welsh countryside on a sunny April afternoon. The house is beautiful, sandstone-yellow facade stretching in the light as the apple trees sway their rose-soft blooms across the green grass of the garden. (In her chest, her stone-heavy heart starts humming.)

Ginny does not expect the room to be this spacious, does not expect the shining-smooth wooden floors to be this tangible, does not expect the view from the balcony to steal her breath, reaching inside her lungs with hill-green fingers, cool and awe-inspiring.

She also does not expect Luna to answer the door. (Does not expect her to have comet-white hair. Does not expect her to have mountain-grey eyes and a laugh that sounds like a waterfall.)

_It doesn’t matter that she’s delicate as eggshell porcelain. It doesn’t matter that she glows cool-bright and unrelenting as the moon. It’s a room, that’s all there is. It’s a room, and maybe I can belong here._

Ginny takes the room. 

“Welcome,” Luna says and walks away to stand under the apple tree, petals falling like kisses into her starlight hair. (In Ginny’s chest, her slate-sheet heart cracks with a sharp, dry sound.)

Ginny learns to live around Luna. 

(That is a lie.)

Luna is bright and fluid and unpredictable. She spreads cloves and cinquefoil under the kitchen table, and she hangs bouquets of marigold and hemlock on to the lintels of all the doors. “Who knows what would happen if I didn’t,” she tells Ginny when asked. She whispers sweet nothings onto the walls of the house, she thanks its roof for protecting her from the rain and misquotes Emily Dickinson at its windowsills. Ginny can’t make sense of it.

_It doesn’t matter that she’s more lively than a highland brook, silver-quick and ever-singing. It doesn’t matter that she glows brighter than Altair, Deneb and Vega put together. She’s too alive, too bright, too beautiful. Girls like her were never meant for girls like me, still half-entombed in the mausoleum of the past._

Ginny comes home late from flying over the Welsh countryside one evening, cheeks laughter-red and hair wind-mussed, to find Luna stuffing St John’s Wort inside her pillowcase. “Hello,” Luna says, “did you have a nice time flying?” She doesn’t mention the firework-blooms in her hand. She doesn’t mention that she’s standing in Ginny’s room. 

She doesn’t mention the fact she’s stark naked.

Ginny doesn’t say a word. _(Girls like me shouldn’t want girls like her.)_

Ginny holds it together. In her chest, her traitorous heart remembers an ageless melody, the kind that has been sung since the dawn of time, with different words in different tongues but has always meant the same thing.

(And her heart sings.)

Later, behind closed doors, Ginny will fall apart, delirious with want (to close her hands over the silk-cream of shoulders, to tangle her fingers into moonshine hair, to lick at the hollow of collarbones) and paralysed with fear. It’s not that she meant to let everything go to shit in the aftermath of Harry, you understand. It’s not that she meant for the sun to fade to black and for the air to turn to ash. But it did all the same, and when she thinks about the entire debacle, she can never understand exactly why it cut her right through her core and split her two clean halves with edges sharp and shiny as broken glass. _Girls like me shouldn’t want girls like her. Girls like me, girls with firelighter hearts and Armenian paper lungs. Girls like me, who crumble and fall apart, with coal-black bones and brittle-charred skin._

Ginny learns to let Luna live around her. 

_Close, close, close. Close as you’ll come, close you’ll let me be. Closer, even. Closer. Please._

And Luna dances under the green-crisp leaves of the apple trees when the sky turns heavy with clouds and storms. And Luna digs holes in the lawn under the cool moonlight, extracting all the rocks she finds and casting cleaning spells on them because she’s wonderful and kind and she’d rather enjoy being cleaned once in a while if she was to spend her entire life buried in the dirt. And Luna spends an entire morning, sun-bright and summer-kissed, sat cross-legged in front of the garden hedge. “Well, I was having tea with the gnomes, of course,” she informs Ginny later that evening, the cherry-ripe colour of sunburn spreading across the bridge of her nose and onto the apples of her cheeks. _I could kiss it better for you if you’d let me. Would you let me? (Tell me.) Best to not think of it. Best to not think of satin-smooth skin and sun-warm cheeks and how you would taste against my lips. (Would you let me? Tell me. Tell me.)_

* * *

“You left me quandaries of grain,” Luna tells the third step of the stairs, one evening. She’s draped across the staircase, cheek flush against the old, worn wood, hair cascading down to the floor, coating everything like shooting stars or ivy. (It punches the air cleans out of Ginny’s lungs.) 

“Salacious as a flea.” Luna’s voice is soft as the velvet darkness of the midnight sky. Ginny walks towards her, slowly, and on impulse, she gathers Luna’s hair from the floor and into her hands. _Is this how the ancient cloth merchants felt when they first held silk in their hands under the heavy-bright sun of Athens? Did they feel the same holy reverence? Did they worship it? Did they bring it to their faces, did they let it touch their skin in cool-smooth caresses? Did they wonder too how the tails of comets had been spun into thread and woven into cloth? Did they think of sun and stars and the infinite softness of summer air at dawn? (Did they? Did they? Did they?)_

Luna stops whispering poetry to the stairs. She stands and turns, her hair slipping through Ginny’s fingers. (Ginny’s fingers curl around thin air, lightning-quick, like the seed pods of touch-me-not balsam.) And Ginny’s transfixed by Luna’s starlight skin, by Luna’s sky-bright eyes, by Luna’s moon-dark smile.

“Between epitome and grime,” Luna whispers, takes Ginny’s jewelweed fingers into her own, soft hands, “your cautiousness and me.” And the words, they mean something (something else, something deeper) to Luna, but Ginny can’t make sense of it.

(Still, in Ginny’s chest, her heart turns into a cathedral choir, thousands of voices braided together into a melody that floats like incense smokes towards the heavens.)

And this is the instant where Ginny realises she’s entirely done for. Staring into Luna’s face with the soft warmth of Luna’s skin against the palm of her hand. _I could hold you. I could love you. Tell me. Am I making this up? Am I imagining this? Tell me. Do you want this? (Tell me. Tell me.)_

Luna kisses Ginny’s wrist, soft as the caress of the June breeze. Then, she laughs and twirls herself, letting go of Ginny’s hands, and the moment is gone. _You kissed me. Your lips, and my skin, and did it mean something? Did it mean anything? Tell me. Do you want this? Do you want me? Any part of me? (You can have it all. Everything. Anything you want.)_

(Ginny’s angel-chorus heart does not stop singing.)

* * *

By the time October gorges the apples with sugar-crisp sweetness and sets fire to the first leaves, Ginny’s entirely sure of three things.

One: She’s desperately in love with Luna Lovegood who scatters acorns across window sills and whispers Caelia’s parts from Spenser’s _Faerie Queene,_ sitting in thorny thickets of brambles (pink-flowered, black-fruited and ever-growing.) Luna Lovegood who leaves her old shoes in the garden for the fairies to live in and tears the last pages of every book so they never have to end. 

Two: She’s never not going to be in love with Luna Lovegood, not ever again. She’s never going to stop longing for comet-tail hair and apple-blossom skin and moon-bright smiles.

Three: She can never act on it.

She can never act on it because she doesn’t know how to love unless it’s too much, too strong, too bright. She loves in the same way a volcano loves the green-wheat fields stretching at its foot, loves in the same way the sun loves the sand-dry ground of the desert. She loves scorching-hot and blinding-white until all that is left is charred earth and burnt skin. And Luna, with her wax-cool skin, with her straw-gold hair? Wouldn’t stand a chance.

This is why, as they pick apples in the golden light of late afternoon, Ginny does not pull Luna flush against her, does not hold her in her arms, does not kiss the tart apple juice from her chin. _Would you let me if I did? I’d let you bite round marks into my shoulders, sink your teeth into flesh like apples, you know. I’d kiss your nose, and your hair, and your eyelids. Would you let me if I dared? (Would you catch fire? Would I hurt you?)_

Instead, Ginny watches Luna climb up into a tree, naked feet treading the grey-rough bark as peals of her laughter tumble down, falling in the apple basket for Ginny to pick up, and bring to her heart, and hold forever. _Would you let me catch you if you fell? Would you let me spell away the grazes, kiss away the watercolour-dark stains of bruises under your skin? And if I held you and healed you, would I destroy you all the same?_

When all the apples are picked, Luna sits down in the grass at the foot of a tree. The air around her smells of fallen leaves and wood smoke, rich and intoxicating. (It makes Ginny’s head swim.) Ginny sits too, and she watches Luna’s slender hands (moon-white fingered and pearl-pink nailed) twist together a wreath of meadow saffron. (The gold-yellow pollen stains the bone of her right wrist and gets under the nail of her left thumb.)

When the wreath is done, dangling-round and purple-soft, Luna considers it with a smile before she places it on Ginny’s head. 

“For the Graces prefer those who are wearing flowers,” she says, her cool fingers running down the side of Ginny’s cheek, “And turn away from those who go uncrowned.”

Ginny exhales as Luna’s fingers explore the curve of her jaw, the corner of her lips, the bridge of her nose. _Oh. You want this. You want this. Do you really? Do you know what I’d do to you if you let me?_

“Luna,” Ginny says. 

“Don’t. I’ll hurt you. I’ll catch fire and you’ll choke from the smoke in your lungs. I’ll burn you down, Luna,” she means to say (but she doesn’t because the words scratch at her throat and catch on her teeth.)

“Luna,” she says again instead. 

_Oh, you want this, you want this, and how is the volcano to push down the bubbling rocks below the surface of the earth when all it knows is to erupt?_

“Can I kiss you?” The words are whispered into the shell of Ginny’s ear, earthy as cider, soft as petals.

“I’ll burn you,” Ginny says, eyes closed, fingers digging into her thighs. (Her cathedral heart sings and sings and sings until she can’t hear anything else at all.)

“You burn me,” is Luna’s reply against her lips. “Again and again… because those I care for best, do me most harm.”

Luna kisses her. It’s a wildfire of a thing, that kiss. Bright and all-encompassing, scorching and colossal. Ginny kisses back, frantic and passionate, until it is no longer a kiss, until it is Rome, and July, and 64 AD. Until it is September 1666 within the walls of London. Until it is Alexandria and the smell of burning paper. (Wildfires can burn for months on end. Ginny never wants to stop.)

“Can I?”

The question is moaned against Ginny’s collarbones, fingers tugging at the hem of her shirt. _You can have it all. Everything. Anything you want._ “Yes,” Ginny manages, “Yes.” (And there are entire libraries contained in that one word, romance novels and epic poems and collections of old love letters still bound in faded satin ribbon.)

Ginny doesn’t notice the cool autumn air licking at the skin of her back. She’s ablaze with passion and want, her fire-skinned hands spreading across Luna’s moon-wax skin like the flame that devoured Serra de Sintra once. Lunae Mons, the ancients called them. Moon mountains, dwelling of Diana the Huntress, Diana of the underworld, Diana of the thrice-splitting way. But it is not Diana that Ginny worships with her hands and mouth, it is not Diana for whom Ginny’s heart sings hymns and psalms (Luna is a goddess in her own right, ruling over apple trees and old wooden stairs, overseeing windowsills and rocks and garden hedges.)

“Tell me what you want,” Ginny begs as they’re lying, skin upon skin, in a bed of fresh grass and yellow toadflax. _Do you want this? Do you want me? I am not hurting you. Am I? Am I hurting you? Are you on fire yet? Will you stay when you burn?_

“You,” Luna replies. _You have me already. You’ve had it for months. Everything. Anything you want. You can have it._ Ginny licks a wet stripe around the curve of her breast; Luna makes a sob-strangled noise. _You like this. I am not hurting you. Am I hurting you? I am not. I am not. Am I?_ Ginny kisses Luna’s mouth, apple-red and honey-sweet and her fingers trail down, down, down, over Luna’s neck and breast and navel and further down still.

“Oh,” Luna moans as Ginny’s fingers reach between her thighs. Ginny kisses her collarbones, licks the skin behind her ear. _You are beautiful, like this. Brighter and more breathtaking than the Perseids in July. Purer and more precious than the first snow of the winter. You are beautiful, always, always. (I want you to love me like a meteorite loves the ground.)_ Ginny shifts her weight to her left elbow, tears her lips away from Luna’s hair and peppers kisses down the sides of her ribcage and on the bones of her hip until Ginny’s face rests between Luna’s thighs. (And Ginny’s chest might burst at the thought.)

Luna murmurs Ginny’s name, (a come-on, husky and low) fisting her hands in Ginny hair. Ginny lets her spark-hot fingers rest against the soft, white skin of Luna’s legs, observing her mound of Venus, her forest of blond hair untouched still by wildfires and natural disasters. Ginny lets her flame-red tongue set Luna’s skin on fire. _I need this. I need you. The taste of you, the smell of you. I need you on my tongue and on my skin and between my own thighs. I need you, all of you, everything that you’ll give me. Do you need me? Do you want me? Do you? Tell me._

“I want...” Luna begs, voice broken with desire, “I need you. Please. Ginny. Please. I want it.” _Whatever you want. Anything. You can have it. Everything I can give, it is all for you to take._ Ginny forgets to breathe, to swallow, to think—all that matters is the heady scent of Luna, the taste of her against Ginny’s tongue, the way she writhes and moans when Ginny moves, and—“Oh! Like this! Like this! Don’t stop! Ginny! Ginny! Oh!”

And, before Ginny can move or talk or understand what’s happening, she’s pressed flat against the ground, with Luna’s star-cool fingers pressing into the centre of her. She gasps, swallowing air like water, light and sound rushing to her head all at once until all she can hear is the song of her body under Luna’s hands, around Luna’s fingers. And then, a sharp flash of white. Mount Vesuvius erupts. Mount Saint Helen cracks open. Atlantis is submerged. _I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you as Pele loved Hawaii when she created islands of lush-green in the midst of the turquoise sea. Can you love me as the wheat-crops love the volcanic rock dust? Can you? Can you?_

The wildfire grows cooler. The volcano stills. Ginny’s body grows sated and soft, Luna’s flesh is warm and pliable as wax, not melted but modelled lovingly by warm fingers and warmer tongue. Ginny shifts to kiss prayers over the bridge of Luna’s nose and into her comet-tail hair. _You’re not burning. I haven’t turned you to ashes. There are no burns on that milky white skin of yours, no blisters and no charred flesh. We’re alright. You’re alright. (I love you. I love you. I love you.)_

“You came, and I was mad for you,” Luna whispers against Ginny’s shoulder, eyes closed and limbs heavy, “And you cooled my mind that burned with longing…”

Ginny laughs at that. She’s been the sun, she realises, afraid of setting fire to the moon, unaware that the moon shines brightest when the sun lends her light. She holds Luna tighter. (Her heart: a cathedral, still. Notre-Dame, or St George’s, or San Giovanni in Laterano. In the hallowed silence, there is place for intimate worship now. For whispered prayers and small miracles.)

“You burn me,” she recites against Luna’s hair.

“Sappho,” Luna whispers back, “had the right idea.”

**Author's Note:**

> Luna quotes Sappho's fragments, though out of order. The quotes are the following sentences:
> 
> _For the Graces prefer those who are wearing flowers,_   
>  _And turn away from those who go uncrowned._   
>  _You burn me_   
>  _Again and again… because those I care for best, do me most harm._   
>  _You came, and I was mad for you, and you cooled my mind that burned with longing…”_
> 
> The bit of poem she misquoted is Emily Dickinson's _You left me – Sire – two Legacies._
> 
> The actual poem goes like this:
> 
> _You left me – Sire – two Legacies –_   
>  _A Legacy of Love_   
>  _A Heavenly Father would suffice_   
>  _Had He the offer of –_
> 
> _You left me Boundaries of Pain –_   
>  _Capacious as the Sea –_   
>  _Between Eternity and Time –_   
>  _Your Consciousness – and me –._
> 
> The writing style of this fic has been, to some extent, influenced by [drawlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drawlight/pseuds/drawlight)'s fanfiction, which I have been reading obsessively for the past few weeks. It was not a conscious decision on my part, it just kind of happened. Please, consider it a form of homage and not of voluntary plagiarism


End file.
